The Smoke Thief

by Shana Abe

Rue glanced down. Her fingers curled over his. “Not even a halfpenny ballad. A mere farthing.”

  “Alas. Nothing I say can move your heart.”

  She shook her head, her throat tight. “Help me save Zane.”

  “Does he even need saving? The child seemed capable enough.”

  “I think he took Herte to the other runner, perhaps even before he went to Mim.” She remembered the courtesan's carefully chosen words, how she'd managed not to give away her secrets after all: I did receive an inquiry. . . . “He's been a part of this city longer than I have, and in a sense, more completely. Zane was born here. He grew up here. He knows the belly of London in a way that even I can't conceive. I think he's known all along where the runner is—probably even what he is, just as he has with me. And when Zane realized the diamond could not be sold or even given away, that you and I were hunting it together—”

  “He threw it to the crocodiles,” Christoff finished. “Beast to beast. Little whelp.”

  “Will you help?” she asked, lifting her eyes.

  “I don't suppose there's aught I could say to convince you to stay out of it?”

  “No.”

  “Even if I promise to protect your urchin?”

  “You told me your honor was no good.”

  “Not quite.” His lashes lowered, veiling the cool clear green with warmer brown; he spoke more quietly. “I said that you were my honor, Rue Hawthorne, and I meant it. I'll do what I can to shield him.”

  “No. I must come too.”

  “Damnation, mouse. Can't you trust me to handle it?”

  “Can't you trust me to?”

  He sighed and drew her back to him, enfolding her in his arms. “Another stalemate, I see. Life with you is going to be challenging.”

  “Perhaps you'd rather have a garish star,” she said to his bare chest.

  “No, my sweet. For all its wild ways, I love the night.”

  She found him by the monkeys. His back was to her; he was slouched against the railing meant to separate the humans from the caged creatures, flipping peanuts from a bag into the pen, one at a time. Shells littered the gravel at his feet. The peach-faced monkeys were dashing over one another in deft, rubbery confusion to grab the treats. For a while they didn't even notice her, standing mute in the tree dapple down the menagerie path.

  One of the peanuts struck a bar and bounced back to him. Zane stooped to pick it up and placed it directly into an eager brown hand, then slouched back against the railing and began pitching again.

  Rue walked up. The monkeys instantly abandoned their search for the nuts and began to screech. The boy's head lifted. She touched a hand to his shoulder and he jerked away as if he'd been scorched, whirling about with the bag in his fist.

  “Come away,” she said to him beneath the racket. “I can't linger here.”

  Without waiting for him to follow, she withdrew down the path, finding an open, empty space before an abandoned cage set askew in the mud, bleached yellow hay still heaped in its corners.

  JAGUARUNDI. A SMALL YET MOST VICIOUS HUNTER.

  She remembered the brawny ruddy cat in her yard and sent a measuring glance back to the boy behind her. He returned it sullenly.

  “You've done a very foolish thing,” Rue said. “I don't think you know how foolish.”

  “Why? Because he says so?”

  “No, because I do. You've stirred up a hornet's nest of ill will, not to mention left us both open to the inquiries of the authorities and a certain element of my past I've been working hard to avoid.”

  “Langford,” Zane sneered.

  “Lord Langford is the least of your troubles.” She watched a mother and son walk by, the boy chattering in a high, excited voice about lions and bears. The child was dressed in green velvet and curls; his mother smiled down at him tenderly. Rue waited until they passed. “None of us is without family, Zane, or histories. Mine have caught up with a vengeance. They're a lot of ruthless old bastards—and they're dead focused on that diamond you filched.”

  Zane bent his head and took a peanut from the bag, crushing the shell between his fingers. He didn't bother to deny her accusation, saying only, “I don't have it no more.”

  “I know,” she replied gently. “But where is the man you took it to? The one like me?”

  His fingers stilled.

  “You can tell me,” she murmured, still gentle. “I'm not angry.”

  “He don't have it neither.”

  She smiled. “I know, Zane. I have it. Rather, I did. The diamond is back where it belongs.”

  “You . . . found it?”

  She looked deliberately down the path, toward the end of the park that held the crocodiles. The boy swallowed. His wolf-yellow eyes flickered up and down her figure, just once, before he dropped his gaze again.

  “I thought it'd make you happy,” he whispered, and for the first time since she'd known him, he sounded close to his age.

  “A ninety-eight-carat diamond! Of course it would have. You're going to make someone a wonderful husband one day, my dear. It was just ill fortune that had this particular diamond wedged in my past.”

  His eyes raised to hers again.

  “Where is the man?” Rue persisted. “I truly must know.”

  He dropped a peanut into the dirt, smashing it with the heel of his shoe. “He's going to take you away, ain't he? Langford. He's going to make you stay with him. Take you back to that place with all the old bastards.”

  “Yes,” she said.

  “Did I make it happen?” he asked in a strained voice.

  “No. It would have happened anyway, sooner or later.” She looked down at the empty cage, seeing forest instead, seeing Chasen, and emerald hills. “It was only a matter of time.”

  “I'm sorry,” Zane said.

  She forced another smile, going to him, drawing his meager warmth close. He felt slight as a sparrow, the bones of his shoulder blades painfully gaunt. “It's not your burden, child. You were only the catalyst. If it had not been you, trust me, it would have been something else.”

  “I'm not a child,” he said hotly, wrenching away. He glared at her with burning cheeks.

  “It's not your burden,” Rue repeated, unmoving. “Tell me where the man is.”

  He was breathing too quickly, glowering at the path with his tawny hair untied and his arms rigid at his sides. The peanuts from the bag began to dribble to the ground. He dropped the lot and kicked it into the shrubs.

  “Zane.”

  “Lambeth. The amplitheatre.”

  Collins Amplitheatre. The pleasure gardens—fountains, mirrors, a display of fireworks every third weekend of the month—one of the most public and popular places in the city. Rue pulled back, staring. Zane hunched his shoulders, his face drawn into a scowl. “It's true. Says he likes the fire shows.”

  “All right. Go home now. You look like hell. And whatever you do, stay away from Far Perch. I'll come back when it's safe.”

  “With him.”

  Zane had turned his head to the dark leafy entrance of the path where Lord Langford now stood waiting, cool and handsome and every inch an aristocrat in splendid pewter-gray satin. He tapped his Nivernois hat against his thigh, never taking his eyes from Rue.

  “Aye, with him. Life is constant change, my friend. But know this: I will always make a place for you, no matter where I may be.” She smiled and placed her palm over her heart. “We're linked now, you know.”

  “I know,” he said, very still.

  Rue moved away, walking toward the marquess. After a few steps she stopped and looked back at the boy.

  “Oh, and Zane. There are a number of fine woods just outside the city. I don't care how or if you do it, but let's be very clear—I do not want a horde of monkeys mucking up my house.”

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  They were to arrive in stages. The guardsmen went first, rambling into the gardens in uneven numbers, disguised as sailors and footmen and chandlers, the blunt, unassuming backbone o
f the city.

  Then came the council, ensconcing themselves in the infamous Delilah House tavern near the center of the park as a loose company of journeymen, enjoying their beer and gin at the close of the day.

  And finally the marquess and Rue, taking a turn through the Collins Amplitheatre and Pleasure Gardens simply as . . . themselves. Well—Christoff was himself. Rue, done up in silk and lace and expensive Italian shoes, was not certain who she was supposed to be. Not the Smoke Thief; not the comte; certainly not prudent Widow Hilliard. She was dressed tonight as finely as any gentlewoman of the realm, her apple-green skirts hooped wide and opulent over a quilted petticoat, her wig caught up in ivory curls that draped from her shoulders down the back of her mantlet of cream crêpe. Powder and rouge covered the bruises on her cheek.

  Only one thing set her visibly apart from the other noblewomen nearby: Rue wore no jewelry, not even a ring. Her sole adornment was a black velvet ribbon around her throat.

  Christoff had tied the ribbon for her in the carriage. He had bent his head to hers and let his fingers brush her nape, a slow, grazing stroke of his hand up and down her spine. He had not kissed her. She'd wanted him to, even turned her cheek to his—sandalwood, smoothly shaved skin—but he'd only settled back into the other seat when he was done, watching her silently with hooded eyes.

  He was in evening kit too, a hunter deceptively relaxed in pale gilt brocade and ruffled lawn, one arm thrown along the back of his seat. He'd helped her from the carriage with the greatest of courtesy, leading her through the elaborate wrought-iron gates of the gardens at a pace so leisurely that the Cit behind them nearly trod on her hem. Fans began to snap open, heads began to turn. Christoff only gazed nonchalantly ahead with her arm in his, taking them both into the shimmering depths of the gardens.

  The amplitheatre was the sunken center of the grounds, a scoop of Roman stone hollowed out of the earth, surrounded by trees and flowers and plenty of nicely secluded alcoves for lovers, or footpads, or both. Collins was best known for its multitude of fountains and flashing mirrors—and its liquor—where anyone with a shilling to spare could stroll admiring the lights and jets of water that frequently overshot their mark. Every so often ladies gave little screams, avoiding the splashes by fleeing into their companions' arms.

  It was a place that teetered on the knife's edge of decorum at the best of times. But tonight was the last Friday of a very wet April; after sunset there would be a show of fire suns and sparklers. Even members of the ton flocked to that.

  Years ago it had proven a profitable testing ground for honing her skills, surveying, tracking, a deft touch upon a pocket or wrist. The din of fireworks offered a most effective protection against the noisy pebbled paths.

  Perhaps the other runner enjoyed it for the same reasons.

  They approached the outer ring of gardens, torchlit camellias and acacias and a canopy of pink Japanese sakura blossoms arching handsomely overhead, still misted with raindrops.

  “Chin up,” the marquess whispered, smiling and nodding at a passing couple. “Let them see you.”

  “I don't know why you think this is going to work,” she replied, just as hushed. The combed pebbles were sprinkled with cherry blossoms; the fragrance marked their every step. “It would have been far better to be circumspect. He's going to discover us straight off.”

  “Aye. Us. But not the others.”

  He was banking on that. Christoff's single encounter with the runner suggested that his abilities as a drákon were fairly limited. Rue said he hadn't noticed her as a footman in the ballroom; Kit himself had noted a distinct lack of energy around him that night at the mask, even when standing beside the fine humming power that was Rue. So they would show the runner what he could not sense, that Christoff and his mate were out hunting in plain sight, a glaring distraction while the others closed in.

  He knew the man's name now too. Tamlane Williams. Kit's father had caught him twice as a youth before he'd drowned in the River Fier.

  Just like Rue.

  She knew all that, in addition to the patterns and coils of tonight's plan. But Christoff hadn't told her the rest of it—that, very simply, he wanted her here in the open with him. That if she remained beside him in this bright flattering torchlight her face would be unforgettable, her every movement tied to his. It was his second, unspoken message to Williams and every other member of the drákon stalking these grounds: Taken.

  Besides, there was no way he was leaving her to her own devices tonight. At least here she was surrounded, protected, by the best of their kind.

  “'Tis a foolish scheme,” his beloved whispered.

  “It worked on you, my lady.”

  “Did it?” She sent him a sideways look. “I seem to recall escaping the Stewart rather easily.”

  “Only because I was too much of a gentleman to give chase.”

  Her brows lifted; she laughed softly. “Oh, is that what happened?”

  “Well, more or less.” Kit put a shrug in his tone. “That, and I was caught short by your beauty.”

  “More like by the pack of people rushing headlong over you.”

  “They were a trifle . . . inconvenient.”

  “You looked like the lone salmon swimming upstream, my lord.”

  “You saw it?”

  “I was there.”

  They stopped before a fountain of marble mermaids and dolphins, water bubbling up from a massive carved nautilus at the top. Droplets caught the mirrored lamplight to bounce liquid fire across the stone faces and tails. He watched her watching it, her head tilted pensively, as if the mermaids held some deep dark secret she needed to fathom. The light etched her profile in silver and gold; she was pale as the sirens, far more lovely. He found his gaze drifting lower, to the open décolletage of the gown, framed with crêpe and a short edging of lace.

  She wore no kerchief for modesty tonight; the ribbons of her mantlet tied just at the base of her throat, their ends trailing down in satiny suggestion over her breasts. A delicate pink bloom had caught in the folds of the crêpe. It rose and fell with the rhythm of her breathing. Christoff found his own slowing to match it.

  Crickets sang. From far away someone laughed. The fountain kept up a peaceful, flowing music that filled his ears.

  “And will you be a gentleman tonight as well?” Rue asked quietly, unmoving.

  “No.” Kit took up the cherry blossom, crushing the petals into perfume between his fingers. “Tonight I'm someone else.”

  Her face tipped to his. She looked from the flower to him, her lips parting; she seemed about to speak when a blithe new voice interrupted from over his shoulder.

  “Langford! Good heavens, is that really you? We'd heard you'd retired already to your damp northern hills!”

  Kit dropped the flower to the path, drawing Rue to his side as he turned to face the group coming up to them. He recognized the speaker at once, and with her a throng of dandies and beaux. The Duchess of Monfield's husband, however, was nowhere to be seen.

  He knew her hardly better than society had permitted. She'd been intriguing at first—intriguing in the way a fine new wine could be, piquant on the tongue, but that was all. She'd allowed him a few purloined kisses but nothing more. By their third meeting he'd wanted nothing more anyway, bored with her constant prattle of gowns and peers and balls. By the fourth he'd decidedly cut her short. Then—six months, a year later—he'd heard she had hooked her fish and gotten betrothed. Poor Monfield; Christoff didn't know him either, but he had to feel pity for any man shackled to a woman who lived solely for cotillions and haute couture.

  “Your Grace,” he greeted her, and released Rue's hand to bow over Letty's. “Surely you know it seldom pays to listen to rumor.”

  “Indeed.” Letty laughed. “But who doesn't adore a good anecdote? I heard the most astonishing one about you from Cynthia Meir.” Her eyes went to Rue, bright, assessing, her lips curving in expectation. She was covered in gemstones and frippery, drenched in that mawkish
French scent she always wore; Kit saw the instant her memory began to wake. Her smile faltered. A tiny, tiny frown made a fold in her unblemished forehead.

  “Your Grace,” said Christoff again formally, offering another bow. “May I present Clarissa, Marchioness of Langford.”

  The beaux understood him before the duchess did. They stirred and hissed, but for the longest while Letty only stood there, staring at Rue. Rue stared back, unsmiling, then sank into a graceful curtsy. The fountain splashed and burbled.

  “Oh,” said Letitia at last, barely a shade too sleek. She took up Rue's hands. “My dear! How delightful. I had no idea. Kit, you slyboots! Is it a country match?”

  “You might say so,” said Christoff, his eyes on his ominously silent new wife.

  “Isn't that fascinating,” trilled Letty. She sent a flinty smile to Rue. “And are you not the most darling little country bride?”

  “What a magnificent necklace, Your Grace,” said Rue, returning her smile with a sudden, cutthroat ferocity. “I've rarely seen such finely matched rubies. And how well they compliment your gown.”

  Letty lifted a gloved hand to her throat. “Well, I . . .”

  “You quite light up this humdrum garden.” Rue turned to Kit. “Langford,” exclaimed his bride, using the precisely same lilt Letty had, “I simply must have one exactly like it.”

  The duchess laughed uncomfortably. “Why, 'tis a family heirloom, Lady Langford.”

  “Is it?” Her voice darkened. “Would you mind terribly if I took a closer look?”

  “Dearest heart, we're running late,” said Kit, pulling Rue forcibly back to him. “Forgive us, I beg you. We have an assignation we cannot miss.” And before the men around them even completed their bows, he had them both walking away toward a particularly dark expanse of the gardens.

  When they were far enough off, he spoke. “How much more tranquil my life would be if you were even a whit less headstrong.”

  “Perhaps you should have considered that before you married me.” She kicked at a pebble. “And now everyone's going to call me Clarissa,” she added grumpily.